The Day Kennedy Was Shot (49 page)

The front door was open. Rose and Stovall led the group. Two walked around behind the house, in case anyone inside tried to run. The television was on and Detective Rose could see two women sitting on a couch, their eyes on the TV screen. He had just reached the little porch when one of the women stood and smiled. “I've been expecting you all,” she said.

Rose was astonished. He introduced himself and the others and the woman said she was Mrs. Ruth Paine. “I've been expecting you to come out,” she said graciously. “Come right on in.” They stepped inside, a bit cautiously, and Mrs. Paine introduced Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald as a Russian lady who spoke no English. The policeman's impulse was to get on a phone and ask Captain Fritz what to do.

However Stovall began to move around the sitting room and the kitchen, and Adamcik came from somewhere and nodded to the ladies and walked into a bedroom. The search was on and Guy Rose wanted to ask questions, but he was confused, so he asked if he could use a phone. In headquarters Fritz took the call and said: “Well, ask her about her husband. Ask her if her husband has a rifle.”

Mrs. Paine volunteered to translate, and Rose said: “Ask her if her husband had a rifle.” Mrs. Paine said, “No” emphatically, but Marina Oswald, hugging the baby to her breast, said, “Yes” in Russian. The surprise on Ruth's face matched Rose's. “We have Lee Oswald in custody,” Rose said diffidently. “He is charged with shooting an officer.” Mrs. Paine translated the news to Mrs. Oswald, and she said something in Russian.

Rose was asked if he had a search warrant. He said no, “but I can get the sheriff out here with one if you want.” The lady smiled as one does who has nothing to conceal. “No,” she said,
”that's all right. Be my guests.” She was retranslating her opinions back to Russian for Marina's benefit, and it became obvious that Mrs. Oswald was not happy with her friend's show of initiative. Ruth Paine cheerfully answered what questions she could, without translating for Marina. Adamcik carefully examined the backyard, where the baby clothes swung from breeze-swept lines. Deputy Sheriffs Harry Weatherford and J. L. Oxford frisked the house, the eyes darting from end tables to couches, lifting cushions and ashtrays, opening drawers—a haphazard operation in which officers worked fast, repeating work already done.

Marina Oswald's expression changed to deep concern, perhaps fright. She pointed to the garage. In Russian she said: “He keeps a rifle in there.” Mrs. Paine repeated the words in English. She thought it strange, maybe incredible, that anyone could conceal a rifle in her garage without her knowledge. She told Detective Rose: “He keeps a rifle in there.” They went out into the garage.

The space was not used for a car. It was small and cheaply made, with four two-by-four beams overhead, a cluttered garage down a step from the kitchen. There were a heater, two old tires, a big band saw with sawdust underneath, some cinder blocks, several cardboard cartons used to store odds and ends, a box of tools and an electric light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.

“Where?” said Rose. Mrs. Oswald led them into the garage. She pointed to an old blanket rolled into a conical shape. It was lying in the sawdust under the band saw. “I saw part of the rifle in that,” she said. Mrs. Paine stepped on the edge of the blanket. “She says her husband kept a gun in here,” she said. Officer Rose approached and Ruth stepped off. He stooped and placed his hand under the middle of the blanket. As he lifted it out from under the saw, Marina Oswald appeared to be stunned. The blanket hung lifelessly at both ends.

Mrs. Paine brought her hand to her mouth. She had thought that the police were merely investigating employees from the School Book Depository, the place from which shots had been fired. Lee Harvey Oswald was but one of many. Besides the policeman had said something about the shooting of a cop. She felt a grave realization overcome her as she thought about the missing rifle and the assassin in the window. She glanced at Marina. Her friend was not one to display emotion, but the pale complexion was white.

The policeman was also surprised. Before he lifted the blanket, he had been certain that a gun was inside. He thought he could detect the outline of it. There was a piece of white string around the narrow end of the blanket. They went back to the living room and Rose asked the women to sit there. He phoned Captain Fritz and told him about the empty blanket. Rose was ordered to bring the women to headquarters with whatever other pertinent material was found.

Another officer, out in the garage, emptied a cardboard box belonging to the Oswalds. It contained several hundred “Freedom for Cuba” leaflets. These were brought to the living room, too. Adamcik was prowling around the front of the house. A youngish woman approached him and introduced herself as Mrs. Linnie Mae Randall. She gave her address as 2439 East Fifth, and she pointed to it. Her brother, Wesley Frazier, drove Oswald to work this morning, she said. She and her mother had been listening to all the excitement on television and had heard Oswald's name mentioned. She said she wanted to report that she was looking out her window this morning and saw Lee put something long on the back seat of Wes's car. It was wrapped in paper or maybe a box.

Adamcik took out his little notebook and wrote some of it. “If you want to see my brother Wesley,” Mrs. Randall said, “he's visiting my father right now at the Irving Professional Center.” Yes, they would want to talk to Wesley. They would want to speak to her again. The policeman thanked her.

The ransacking of the house was haphazard. In the carton with the “Freedom for Cuba” leaflets were two photographs of Oswald holding his rifle. They were overlooked at the time. Stovall asked if Marina's husband had left a farewell note or said anything when he left home that morning. Mrs. Oswald shrugged. She had been half asleep when he dressed. A deputy went to her bedroom and glanced into a Russian teacup and came out of the room with Lee's wedding ring. It was of no great significance to the police, but it told the whole heartbreaking story to Marina. He had never removed his wedding ring. He had never returned it to her, even in the heat of arguments when he had beaten her with his fists. The ring in the teacup was a resignation from marriage. The end. In her heart, the young Russian pharmacist knew that, whatever the crime, “my crazy one” was in it.

The screen door swung open and a good-looking man walked in. He smiled at Ruth and said: “As soon as I heard about it I hurried over to see if I could help.” The police asked who this was. It was Michael Paine, husband of Ruth, an aircraft executive. The marriage was a friendly estrangement, difficult to define. The police studied the man and wondered why he would “hurry over” as soon as he heard about it. Mr. Paine meant that the airwaves were laden with the name Lee Harvey Oswald and he knew that Oswald was a weekend boarder at his wife's house.

The cops found Russian books and, not knowing whether they were significant or not, stacked them in the pile with the wedding ring, the rifle blanket, Mrs. Oswald's passport, her birth certificate, immigration card, the birth certificates of the children—June and Rachel. There were some letters written in Russian from Marina's family in Minsk, a diploma, a few communist tracts. From Mrs. Paine's bedroom the officers removed a large assortment of vacation color slides, a Sears Tower slide projector, a metal filing box.

With no advance knowledge of what to take, they began to outdo each other in picking up material to be assessed at
headquarters. Within a few minutes, they had a second slide projector, three boxes of high fidelity records, a telephone index book, even a wall bracket with instructions for mounting. A policeman riffled through a magazine, and, being mystified about its contents, tossed it onto the pile. It was
Simplicity
, a sewing periodical.

The chief walked into headquarters like an intruder. He came up out of an array of vehicles storming in and out of the basement, screeching brakes, and shouts, and Jesse Edward Curry took the elevator up to the third floor feeling that he had never known a day like this and wouldn't want to see another like it. As he stepped off at the third floor, he took a step and stopped. Ahead of him was a mass of male humanity jammed and murmuring. There were cameras, huge staring lights, and microphones.

Someone yelled: “Let the chief through!” and he bent his head and started toward his office, at the opposite end of the cross. Here and there he recognized a detective trying to buck the tide, working along the edge of glassy offices toward the elevator. Some men thrust microphones under the chief's chin and yelled: “Come on. Give us a statement. Did he kill the President? Did he?”

Curry kept moving slowly toward his office. He passed Fritz's Robbery and Homicide, but he couldn't see over the tops of all the heads. He remembered General Order 81, and he recalled how well Glen King had cooperated with the press. But what the hell was this! This was insanity, madness, bedlam. This was an aggressive group of strangers gone berserk. They were taking over headquarters.

He fought his way to his office. There wasn't time to look for messages. Cables were coming in thick and black over windowsills, curling across the floor and out into the hall. Curry saw Batchelor and Lumpkin, but they too were helpless. The chief
learned that a policeman had had to be posted at Fritz's door to keep the press from crushing in on the interrogation itself.

Obviously police headquarters had been overrun by the press. The control points at elevators and staircase were worthless because the nation's reporters were descending on Dallas with credentials, and the European journalists were en route. It was a time to make a decision. The word must come from Curry. The situation was so bad that he had but two choices: either call his reserves and have the press dispossessed from the third floor en masse or permit them to remain there and hope that the situation would improve.

Curry was a “cooperation” chief. Editors and writers can be venomous. The story of the assassination was now bigger than anything Dallas could remember; it would go down in history as one of the major stories of the twentieth century, possibly the most dramatic. If Curry threw them out, there would be wails and protests and phone calls from men in high places. The chief and his department could assume a defensive posture in the assassination. It had happened in his city. Dallas, which had done its best, could be charged with according the President token protection.

It would be a lie. But it could be written. It could gain credence. These were not local reporters, men whom Curry knew by their first names. They were from big city dailies and wire services in San Francisco and Seattle and Salem and New York, Omaha, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, Baltimore . . .

If Curry weighed the matter, he confided in nobody. This was a day for people to be shocked and stunned for one reason or another, and it was his turn. He could not believe what he saw in the hall, but he would do nothing about it. A word from Curry and the harassed police would have been delighted to order everybody off the floor. A press room could have been set up on the first floor, where the courts and the traffic violations
bureau were through with their work. Captain King could have reported to the press every half hour or every hour. He could have given them whatever Curry and Fritz wanted to tell. The reporters would have more space to set up their portable typewriters, their telephones. The photographers could have been allowed to see and photograph the suspect at the successive lineups which would be held several times for witnesses today.

There would be no scoops, no newsbeats. A sergeant and four officers could have maintained order on the first floor. But the word never came. The chief wanted to be a “good guy” and he was. But the press always had trouble spelling the word gratitude. It took what it wanted; it hanged whom it pleased; it unmanned officials who stood in its way.

Curry left his office and fought his way to the Homicide Bureau. The situation was intolerable. The chief couldn't understand men who were shouting in his ear. He got to Fritz's office and went by the cop at the door and inside to see what the captain was doing.

He looked at the prisoner, who looked up from his chair at the corner of the desk. Then he nodded to Fritz and the others. Curry's stomach began to sicken. This, too, was all wrong. This was no way to interrogate a prisoner. The proper way was to have him alone in a quiet room, with perhaps one other person—a witness or an interested party. He looked at the Secret Service men, including Inspector Thomas J. Kelley, the two men from the FBI, the Texas Rangers lounging against a wall, and two detectives from the Homicide Bureau. There was barely room to stand in the office. The air seemed to have left the place.

The chief of police looked at the young man with the bruise over one eye and a small laceration under the other. He didn't look like much, to have caused such a commotion. Curry left the office without asking a question.

The most positive person was Mrs. Marguerite Oswald. She had the righteously folded face of a woman who knows her rights. She arrived in Dallas dry-eyed. If there were tears for her son, she was saving them. Behind the glittering eyeglasses, her gaze was as steady as the flight of a bullet. She said she did not wish to speak to the police. She would not speak to them if she was brought into their presence. The custard jowls shimmered with determination. “I want to speak to the FBI,” she said.

People by the thousands all over the world may have wept, may have wrung their hands at this time. Many who were totally unrelated to the crime were overcome by hysteria and could not continue their tasks. This woman dominated everything within her purview. All her life she had fought for a foot or two of living space, and the enormity of this crime, even the possibility that her son might be charged with it, would not alter her loud and indignant attitude toward the world.

She had dominated her husbands. She had dominated her sons. Marguerite was easily affronted and could nourish pain for a long time. The husbands, one by one, had died or divorced her. The oldest son, John Edward Pic, lived in Staten Island, New York, and did not communicate with her. The second one, Robert Edward Lee, Jr., lived in nearby Denton. She had not seen him in a year. The baby, Lee, had left her to run off to Russia. Marguerite had made trips to Washington, demanding to see highly placed officials, because her Lee had changed his mind and desired to come home. It was not a poor mother's duty to bring him back. That was the government's job. He had served his country as a United States marine. He had been overseas in the Far East. If, in Moscow, he had demanded the right to renounce his American citizenship, it had nothing to do with his present frame of mind, which was to come home with his Russian bride and their baby.